psivchaz

@psivchaz@reddthat.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Interesting. It's a constant reminder⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s been a long time but I recall a study featured on Freakonomics where a national park tried different signs to get people to not steal rocks. Signs like, “Taking rocks hurts the ecosystem” and “Taking rocks is a crime.”

  The only effective one was something along the lines of, “A million people visit this park every year and leave things alone.” Suggesting that telling people to do the right thing is less effective than peer pressure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How embarrassing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I knew healthcare was messed up but I legit didn’t know how messed up until it happened to me. My daughter got put on a specialty medicine because of a relatively rare kidney condition. It had to be compounded, because she is a small child but the medicine only came in adult doses.

  Aetna denied coverage, stating I had to get the medicine from CVS (which is owned by the same parent company of Aetna). CVS does not compound medicine, so we couldn’t get it from them. I spent almost a full year on the phone arguing with them and around $6000 paying out of pocket before I was able to switch insurances.

  I consider myself reasonable. Even in a functioning system, mistakes can happen and need to be resolved, and I spent the first month or more assuming this was just an innocent mistake. What got to me was the total lack of recourse. Day after day on the phone with people, some of whom genuinely seemed to care but could do nothing. They intentionally separate the patients from the people making decisions so that all the decision makers get is a few fields in a form, not the whole story. The people in charge are even more separated so they never have to hear anything about the people they’re screwing over. And if I couldn’t afford the extra $6000 burden, I just wouldn’t have gotten the medicine and in the best case she would have spent that year in and out of the hospital and in the worst she wouldn’t have survived the year.

  I tend to think most people are decent. But the system we’ve built makes sure to separate people by impenetrable layers of bureaucracy to ensure that the decent people either can’t do anything or never know there’s a problem, while the indecent never have to be confronted with the damage they do. It’s insane.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon falls through the cracks⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was in a position like this once. The first two or three months were great. TBH, I mostly played video games and cleaned the house. It felt like free money. By the six month mark, I quit to go to something else. It’s surprising how mentally draining it is to just do nothing.

  I think I took two things away from that experience: One, I think people generally have an innate need to produce something. We don’t want to just sit around and entertain ourselves, we want to contribute. Two, I think the 40 hour work week isn’t quite the right balance. Maybe 30 would be better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Même] Which movie was this for you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is legit the movie I shit on most. I hate it so very much. It’s not the plot exactly, it’s two things:

  • The tech accuracy is so bad. I won’t go into everything but they go out of their way to say shit that doesn’t make sense. My favorite example is that the AI is just a big floating orb and they feed it data through infrared, the slowest communication method available. Like they didn’t have to say infrared, they chose that.

  • The product placement. Again, a lot of examples but my favorite is how at the end he shows up with Guitar Hero and the kids are like “Yay Guitar Hero that’s the best game ever.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think of it exactly in terms of the trolley problem. The whole premise is that if you do nothing (don’t vote) more people die. By flipping the lever, fewer people die but you’ve taken an action that leads directly to their deaths. The philosophical question isn’t just “is it better for fewer people to die” but “in pulling the lever, are you directly responsible for those deaths?”

  My answer would be that inaction is itself an action. In this scenario, you have found yourself responsible either way. Suppose you pull the lever, though, to save as many lives as you can… Wouldn’t the ones who die as a result of this have loved ones that absolutely do blame you?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is straight⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah a cis dude might get testosterone if his normal testosterone is low. I assume there’s something similar for women. I don’t think that’s what this guy is talking about though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Proving them wrong": After raising minimum wage, California has more fast-food jobs than ever⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This feels like bad data to me. Don’t get me wrong, I support it. It’s just that if you’re going to determine if the raise in wages “took” jobs, it’s not whether there was a gain at all but rather how California fares compared to other states, right?

  That is, if restaurants went on a massive hiring frenzy country-wide due to an increase in fast food consumption everywhere, but other states had a much larger increase, it would suggest though not prove that the increase in wages caused fast food restaurants to hire less actively in California.

  I suspect that’s not the case, but I just don’t like passing off incomplete data as proof of something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Celebrating 6 years since Valve announced Steam Play Proton for Linux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I caved and got an A11y on sale. I explained why I think those games are trash, but at the end of the day I caved to peer pressure that wasn’t even directed at me. On the plus side, we can play stuff together in the same room now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Technically Correct⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn’t, and only inconveniences the poors.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The cheaper options aren’t even cheaper, we’re just ignoring the cost and subsidizing them. Suppose that a gallon of oil cost how much it took to produce, but also how much it costs to scrub the resulting CO2 from the air, clean up any spills and scrub any CO2 made during production and transport, plus pay the additional medical bills of the people who’s health is affected both in production and from the resulting air pollution? That price would be a hell of a lot higher, but we instead just pretend we aren’t paying those costs (even though we are and will).

  But yeah, the people with the most money and the ones making the laws don’t have to pay those costs now. They can just pretend nothing is wrong til they’re dead, let someone else hold the bag later.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon visits Canada⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is true of America, too. I think most people you are likely to meet in America sit between the “not at all racist” and “I mean yeah but it’s pretty low key and subconscious” end of the racism spectrum, it’s just that our more virulent racists are so often cops and presidential candidates.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do we put up with this crap?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Look, I’m basically a communist most of the time, but I don’t think this is a good take. I’ll admit I don’t actually know the numbers but I know air travel is expensive and not great for the planet.

  It could be better, sure, but I would argue that cramming people in and offering the barest of amenities is a good thing when it comes to air travel. Yes, it sucks to be in a plane but it sucks to pollute the air too. It’s good that more people have more travel options now, and it’s good that we can get more people to more places with less fuel than ever before. We shouldn’t bitch about that, we should accept it as a necessity for getting what we want: to arrive someplace far away in an amazingly short period of time, allowing us to see more of the planet than any of our ancestors, while minimizing the harm as much as we can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'A king above the law': US Supreme Court's Trump ruling prompts judges to warn of 'nightmare scenarios'⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  He won’t but it seems win/win to me.

  • I mean, he’s not long for this world so he won’t even really have to deal with the consequences.
  • He’ll definitely end up in the history books for centuries.
  • We wouldn’t have to deal with Trump anymore.
  • The Republican party would be in chaos.
  • There would almost certainly be a bipartisan push for a constitutional amendment to limit the ability of the President to do shit like that in the future.

  The only potential downside I can see is that they might use Trump as a martyr to get someone even crazier and probably smarter elected.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top post in the conservative subreddit: Being unable to work at a "woke" company⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top post in the conservative subreddit: Being unable to work at a "woke" company⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They already remade Little Mermaid too recently. Terry Crews as Rapunzel, though, is still on the table.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Julia Louis-Dreyfus Calls ‘Bulls—‘ Over Complaints That ‘Comics Can’t Be Funny Now’ Due to P.C. Culture: It’s Not an ‘Impossible Time to Be Funny’⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not saying, “Hey, it’s fine” I’m saying that people and cultures change, and should be allowed to change. Never before have people been so unable to escape their past. Yeah, occasionally you get a Bernie Sanders who seems to nail it right off. But most people have some skeletons or some shit they’d be embarrassed about if it were dug up and went viral.

  When you dig up the past and hit people with it, you discourage progress. People are more likely to dig in their heels, knowing that the opinions they have today they’ll have to answer for tomorrow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Julia Louis-Dreyfus Calls ‘Bulls—‘ Over Complaints That ‘Comics Can’t Be Funny Now’ Due to P.C. Culture: It’s Not an ‘Impossible Time to Be Funny’⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree but I do sympathize with one part of it. Things that were widely considered funny a few years ago are not today. I do think it’s unfair to hold people in the past to the standards of today, but people love digging up old footage and bludgeoning people with it.

  If a comic makes a joke and it bombs, maybe it’s not funny. Maybe they used it with the wrong audience. Reading the culture and the room and choosing wisely is part of the job, like you say. But if it bombs 5 years later on Twitter, maybe it should have just been left in the past with the context it belonged in and not dug up and resurrected for clicks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨math checks out⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And then interrupting that hold music at seemingly random intervals to tell you that they care about you, or to tell you that you could do this faster on their website.

  I had to call Assurant recently because their website literally threw an error and told me to call in and wouldn’t let me proceed. I was told by the automated messages no less than 4 unstoppable times that the website is faster, and then after explaining the situation to the person she told me that the website is faster.

  She was clearly reading the script and it’s not her fault so I kept quiet, but I have rarely felt such extreme rage in my life.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon's Fallout TV Series Renewed For Season 2⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just saw the power armor fight last night. I just see it as application of video game logic, and kind of appreciated it that way. Ghoul dude is clearly wearing some armor or something since he tanked bullets to the back. I mean, in the games you can tank a nuke if you’re wearing the right armor.

  If you watch it as Fallout: The TV Show rather than a TV show set in the Fallout universe, it all feels very natural.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon likes public humiliation⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I loved that skit on CollegeHumor. youtu.be/gwChStnnidA

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And that’s becoming it’s own problem with search, especially with technical questions. The good answer is also old and out of date.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is out of ideas⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This list is missing hookers and cocaine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨life⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, until we get much better at robotics there will always be shit jobs. The key is just that the people who do them should also probably be able to live a decent life without having to worry about how they’ll eat or have shelter or survive if they get sick.